Advice from experienced Truck buyers

Have only bought one truck before (97 Chevy W/T 1500 Regular cab V6) bought used. Great truck. Have been working out of it last 4 years. No problems. Just lacks a little power and gets cramped with 3 Amigos in there with me. So have been wanting to buy a new Chevy/GMC/Ford 1500 EXt.CAb w/ V8. I sent out feelers by Cars. com to local dealers.
The GMC dealer called and said they have one on the lot. EXT. Cab W/T with 5.3 V8. I like the Chevy/GMCs because that is what I have now and like what my current truck has done for me. Talking with him on the phone he says sticker is 24,500 but that they can sell it for 20,500. How much off of that price can I expect to get. Thanks for your help.

What year and how many miles? I paid 10,500 for my 2000 Silverado LS 2500 with a 7.5 ft meyer plow. The truck is immaculate and has 86,000 miles. If I were you for that money, find a decent used 2500HD extended cab. You can do so much more with a big 3/4 ton versus a 1/2 ton. I have seen 00-04 2500HD go for like 20-25 grand. Just some food for thought

Make sure to go to www.capitalonefiance.com and see what kind of interest rate you can get too, and make sure your local dealer will match that rate.

Once your local dealer gives you his best price - hopefully beating carsdirects price - go to another area dealer and tell him that you can buy this truck at the other dealer for whatever that dealer said.... but subtract 500-1000$ off the price they had quoted you. This way this dealer will try to match this false price or maybe even beat it, and once they do what they do, take their best price to yet another dealer and do the same thing. Keep going till you have hit 3 or 4 dealers and then before you sign up with any one of them, go back to the first one you stopped at and give him a chance to beat the best price you got a firm quote on from the other 2 or 3 dealers. Chances are he will.

Again, make sure they will all get you a good interest rate and often they try to make up for a low profit sale by jacking up the interest rate they give you. If they try to give you a crappy rate just stand up and tell the guys thanks but no thanks and head for the door, they will either lower the rate or you go somewhere else to buy the truck.

other tips, go in on the last few days of the month. They want to make deals at the end of the month to meet goals. Also I have found best prices given late in the evening just before closing, to get " just one more deal in " before they all go home for the night....

Buying a car or truck today is a art form, if you know how to do it you can get a good deal, but if you don't you end up getting screwed. No matter how nice the people at the dealership seem to be, TRUST me... all they care about is how can they milk as much money from you as possible.

WOW. you can get a much better deal if you come to michigan, around 17-19,000 up here for that....

I picked up a Brand new 2500HD WITH an 8ft plow, w/t package 4x4, 6.0, for $24,000 AFTER tax.

if your about to spend that much on a 1500, you mine as well spend a few grand more for a 2500hd IMO.

So I got a beefier vechicle than you want, for a better price, with same options PLUS a Plow Minus the Ext. Cab. And the plow adds about $4,000. So... you should be able to get a 2500HD 4x4 ext cab w/t for 24,000 without the plow

I determine how many trouble free miles I think is realistic for said vehicle. New ford 150,000 cost 24,000 (I am just throwing a price out there) and you have to use the out the door price. Here dealers charge sales tax, private sellers don't, big savings at 8%.

So divide the 24,000 price by the 150,000 miles and you come up with a cost of.16 per mile.

Now try a used diesel 24,000 price 20,000 miles now. (I just bought a 3/4 ton Dodge crew cab at this price and mileage/ with the Larime package) Estimated 300,000 mile life so we have 280,000 miles left for use divide 24,000 price buy the 280,000 miles and you have a cost of 8.5 cents per mile.

With a diesel you will have higher fuel costs but the mileage is better too. I have not done the math on that. You could do much more figuring to get the costs down to the nitty gritty but I have found this works well enough.

My experience has been if you use regular gas vehicle it is almost always better to buy new. If you are going diesel depends on the mileage.

Not to start a "which truck is better" but I have 4 Chevy's for sale, a Ford with 170,000 miles and a new Dodge that I love so far, only time will tell.

The formula works great and takes the emotion out of the buying decision.

“If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.”

We just bought a 06 F250 SD XLT, it stickered at well over 34k (almost 35k) we ended up getting it at just over 30k. We took the "zero % financing" over any rebates. A good deal IMO is around 9-11% under invoice. Do the price wars between dealer's, it was either a Dodge or this Ford and the Dodge dealer gave me a price and then I went back to the Ford dealer and asked if they could beat that price, I did this twice and went with the Ford for a few reasons, I used to work at this dealership so I know them well, I like the Ford's a little better and the sales person at the Dodge dealer was a b!tch so I told her to keep her POS Dodge.